Psychodrabbles
by Lil' Meru
Summary: A collection of drabbles about the characters we all know and love. UPDATED. PLEASE READ! Possible story start!
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Psychonauts. The characters of Psychonauts are tortured for my own amusement, and I don't profit from it. The only thing I own is the plot of this story.

Author's Note: This is the story about the first time Raz realized he was psychic. It's kind of nifty, and I'd enjoy it if you reviewed and commented. Your opinion is muy appreciated dudes!

All of the best acrobats start young. A child's mind, after all, is more flexible than a teenager or adult. After a certain point, it's too late. Doubts have already been formed about catching a hold of a trapeze after a back flip, and fear becomes more difficult to overcome. Roldan had practiced this philosophy with his son. Raz was learning to walk a tight rope within a few months of his first steps. Now, at four, he was trained fairly well, equal to many older acrobats in their circus. He shouldn't have been nervous. Not a bit.

He nearly burst into tears when his father brought his costume in.

Roldan gently set the clothes on his son's bed, slightly concerned. Raz was unusually pale. "Razputin? Are you alright?"

Raz nodded timidly, but his green eyes screamed otherwise.

His father understood the emotion. He had felt pre-performance jitters when he was younger as well. "You'll do fine. You've got an easy part, remember? Short distance leaps, easy flips. You've done a lot of harder things in practice plenty of times."

Raz nodded, trying to look confident while he pulled on his leggings. His foot got cross-ways in them, and after a bit of stumbling he fell flat on his rear.

THAT got Roldan's attention. Razputin had never been much of a klutz, even when he was first learning how to walk. A loss of balance was a problem. Even easy parts require extreme precision in acrobatics. He frowned slightly, much more concerned now than before. He hadn't expected Raz, always brazen and bold, to be so shaken up. He cautiously made a suggestion. "If you aren't ready, we could take you out and improvise. Ollie can do the opening on his own, and I'll leave out that last catch and--"

"NO!" Raz nearly shouted back, and Roldan couldn't decide if that was the right or wrong button to press. Raz didn't always enjoy acrobatics, but he was violently stubborn. Giving up went against his nature. He met his father's eyes with a grim determination. "You said that you have to start when you awe wittle to be a good acwobat."

Roldan nodded slowly. Looking back, he wished he hadn't told him that. Raz was still scared, and Roldan knew it. His face was unnaturally gray, and was now tinted green. That combined with his determined eyes made him look more like a suicide bomber than a four year old acrobat.

Raz knew his father was still watching him, and tried in vain to make his hands stop shaking so he could put on his shoes. "I can do it," he said in a hollow voice, more to convince himself than his father.

Roldan decided to let it go. It was a decision he later regretted. But at the time, he didn't see the sense in fighting with the boy, and he had no doubt that his son had the skill needed for the night's performance. He just needed to calm down. Roldan decided the best way to bring that about was to encourage him, to show that he had confidence in him, even if Raz didn't. "Of course you can. Now hurry and finish getting ready." Then he left. Roldan didn't have a poker face, and if he stayed in the caravan with Razputin shaking like that, it was going to make him nervous too.

Raz walked to his window, climbing onto a crate so that he could watch his dad leave. He now shook all over, uncontrollably, and turned a much more violent shade of green. You had to give him credit though. He waited until he was sure his father was out of earshot before he threw up.

As the line in goes in several cliché Hollywood films, "The show must go on!" So it did. And despite the fact that Raz felt like the strong man was trying to beat his way out of his stomach, he did well. When the show began, years of training pulled his balance and surefootedness back to him. He sailed through the air just as gracefully as the others, and the crowd showed its approval. As the show went on, Raz's confidence slowly returned, and soon he stopped thinking about tossing his cookies. Eventually, he forgot to be nervous at all, and was actually starting to enjoy himself. At least, a little. Everything was going smoothly until the finale.

Roldan noticed with some hesitation that somewhere along the way, something had shifted, and things no longer seemed quite right. It seemed more than a hunch, but not strong enough to be a premonition. It was a wrongness. The wrongness grew in his mind when he had to stretch farther than usual to reach the trapeze, but he tried to ignore it. The timing was a little off in that area was all. The bar had not completed its out-swing when he jumped for it. Roldan had, of course, noticed it, and to compensate, had given himself a little more power than usual when leaving the platform. The problem did not magnify itself to him right away. Though he had taught Raz himself, he hadn't performed with someone that young in a very long time, save the practices of this routine before the show. He forgot that Raz was young, inexperienced, and, as a child, didn't really accept the idea that he could fall. Roldan only remembered this after he had started his swing back, when there was nothing else he could do to propel himself farther. Raz had jumped without judging the distance; a leap of faith as it were. Roldan tried to stretch himself out further, praying he could compensate for his son's error in judgment. It wasn't enough. The boy's eyes showed sudden terror as his hands missed the waiting ones of his father's by a solid inch.

He looked small and frightened now. The ground below looked hardened and menacing, as if waiting for a sacrifice.

"RAZ!" came the shout from Roldan, torn from his throat by a deadly fear. His voice rang true, even above the screams of the frightened audience. He swung the trapeze in a new direction now, toward the center pole, and leapt for it. As he slid down the support, he yelled another word. _Fall._ It was a single command that automatically froze any acrobat in their place. A young girl, about fifteen with blonde hair, halted on the same platform Raz had leapt from. She took a step back from the edge. She would have been next for Roldan to toss to the tightrope. Her halt, in particular, was essential.

Though the _fall_ command held a freezing power over her and the others, it did not stop Razputin's deadly descent. Raz screamed loudly. He had not fallen, even in practice, for more than a year. That had been into the waiting embrace of a safety net. Even as Roldan slid down the center pole at a speed that blistered his palms, he knew he wouldn't make it in time to catch him. Raz knew it too. He shut his eyes tightly, waiting for the sudden stop that was inevitable. It never came. Instead, something warm held him, harboring its cargo away from the ground. Raz opened his eyes slowly. It was a hand. An orange hand made of some strange energy. Raz didn't understand until later, when he calmed down, that the energy came from him.

The crowd was silent.

Raz jumped off the hand and ran to his father's arms as his saving grace disappeared behind him. Roldan scooped him up and held him as the little boy shook with sobs of relief. The crowd erupted with cheers and applause, and Roldan pondered, not for the first time, the insanity that was a circus. He had no idea what the hell the audience thought had taken place. He didn't care either. All he knew was that, holding his son safe in his arms, he was thankful. It was the first time a psychic power had ever done him any good.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I don't own Psychonauts. Neither do I own Dawn of the Dead. I'm a poor college kid. I own nothing. rattles tin cup Donations are accepted!

AN: Just using Psychonauts characters to get scary movie bugs out of my system.

She told him she liked scary movies.

It was true. She adored the entire genre. Anything from The Birds to Jaws to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It hadn't been a lie. But Raz finally managed to creep even her out. Every time he could get away from HQ, he showed up at the Zanatto Estate holding two or three scary movies. He hadn't been able to watch many movies growing up, so she enjoyed getting to share the experience with him. Soon it moved to psychological thrillers, such as Saw, The Sixth Sense, The Ring. Old classics like The Fog. For years they shared this strange obsession with one another. It never bothered her until they started in on the zombie movies.

At first it wasn't so bad. Resident Evil on a Tuesday afternoon, daylight streaming in. It had been a while since Raz had rented one that could make her jump. To be honest, he looked sort of pleased when she grabbed on to him. He laughed.

She punched him in retaliation. "Dork," she said, because it was a witty and scathing reply.

He just grinned at her. "Sorry sweetie. Love you though."

So she was perfectly content to lie safe in his arms after that, and the movie didn't seem all that frightening anymore.

The next morning they fired up 28 Days Later while chowing down on strawberry pop-tarts. This one only caused a few internal flinches. Other than that, it was pretty mellow. When they finished, they took Spit, the puppy Raz had gotten her for Christmas, on a walk. Spit was wonderful. He didn't know a thing about zombies. Tennis balls were his forte.

_Are you gonna throw that ball? That's what it's for, you know. PLEASE?_

It was Dawn of the Dead that finally got her.

They had gotten back late. The Aquato Circus had asked Raz to do a special show with them, even though he was no longer officially traveling with them (he was going on eight years as a Psychonaut, after all). So he had gone and done as they asked, and Lili went too. Unfortunately, since the acrobats open with all the performers and close alone, he had been obliged to stay until the end. Lili didn't much enjoy the screaming children and stale popcorn. But she did it because she loved him. They finally made it back a little after midnight, and Raz quickly decided that he couldn't sleep. He was still running off of that high that comes from performing for a crowd. So they went to Lili's room and popped in another movie. ­Dawn of the Dead.

Lili was freaked in five minutes. The little girl should **not** have been the first zombie. No no no.

But she had already jumped back on Tuesday, and refused to do so again. So she took it and took it. The husband. The security guard in the fountain. And the fat woman. Oh she was the worst. She had lain there, bleeding, cold, until she died. The black cloth, tossed over her eyes quick, as if her death was shameful.

And then she sat up. Opened a pale yellow eye and screeched. She had been normal just seconds before. Well, she hadn't desired to tear flesh from human bodies at any rate. But death had changed her. Made her horrible. Made her wicked. She lunged from the bed. So fast. She probably weighed nearly three hundred pounds. Had probably not run for ten years. But she did now, fat feet slapping against the tile, arms raised and back, almost like a T-Rex.

She met the bad end of a fire poker in seconds, but the image of that eye, that mouth opened in an ungodly declaration of hate, burned in Lili's mind. And she, with all her psychic power, could not root it out.

The movie didn't bother Raz in the least. He was even laughed when the gun man was picking zombies off from the rooftop. But Lili couldn't stand it later, when the same man smeared his own blood across the marker board. And still she didn't flinch, didn't cry out or reach for her boyfriend's hand. The torture finally ended, and Raz kissed Lili goodnight.

"That was a good one. Really had me going," Raz replied enthusiastically through a yawn.

"Yeah," she managed back. The house's silence seemed deafening now. As if waiting for an invasion of a three-hundred pound crazy woman hungry for blood.

Raz smiled back. "See you tomorrow then. Last day before my next mission." Then he reached for the light…..

And found that he was being held. Very tightly. By….Lili? Who was….crying?

"Lili? What's wrong baby?"

She didn't hear him at all. She was pleading. "Please don't turn out the light."

Raz stood dumbfounded. Trying to get his mind to catch up with the sudden change in environment. Then he could feel Lili's mind reaching out to his, practically screaming, and he mentally kicked himself.

"The movie scared you." Not a question.

Lili nodded, still clinging. It was really very unlike her. Maybe that's why it had taken him so long to notice. He had never seen her frightened so badly, and he had certainly never had her cling to him before.

Still, he couldn't help but be exasperated. "Why didn't you tell me it was scaring you?! We could have turned it off."

That got her to look up and act herself. "Because usually your all in my brain and know everything anyway, nosy ass." Her green eyes glared daggers, but they still glistened.

Raz sighed. "I'm sorry Lili. I really have been trying to stop accidentally reading your thoughts. It's just hard because we're already so—"

Lili finished. "Connected. Yeah, I know."

Raz nodded, still frowning at her. "Do you want me to stay?"

Lili nodded, no longer angry or trying to act tough. "Yeah."

Raz smiled and turned on the lamp next to the bed on before turning out the overhead light. "Your Dad's not gonna kill me, right?" he asked as he slid under the covers fully-clothed. It was heaven. Smelled like Lili's cherry blossom shampoo.

She shook her head, grinning, before sliding in next to him. "'Course not. We'll tell him what happened."

"Yeah. 'Cause he'll believe that his Lili was scared of some cheap Hollywood movie."

"Idiot."

"So abusive Lili."

"Mmn."

"I love you."

"I love you too Raz."

And then she was OK. The love of her life was laying there beside her, holding her close. No zombie was going to change that. So she drifted off in peaceful sleep.

Errrr...I know I haven't updated in ages. That's why I did the drabble thing. So all the stories would stick together. Anyway, I'd love a review or two!


	3. Chapter 3

Raz pushed his goggles on top of his head with a sigh, staring irritably at the task set before him. His task (the Russian chicken) stared back stupidly. She had no idea Razputin Aquato was plotting her demise. Then again, maybe she did. She _was_ supposed to be psychic. But if she did, she was not smart enough to try to escape. Raz was planning things that would make grown men run screaming.

Sasha watched the younger Psychonaut with a sort of bemused expression. Sasha was a little older now. His black hair was touched with grey (possibly from all the worrying he did over Raz and Milla), and his face held lines that it did not have ten years ago. He was, however, still the same Sasha. He closed his notebook, shaking his head. "You don't look well Razputin. Tired of the Murmansk project already?"

Raz doodled idly on his paper, frowning. "Two months of scouring a bird brain for psychic signatures is not my idea of fun."

"You haven't found anything?"

The younger shook his head. "Nothing. I'm honestly stumped. There is hardly anything in its mind. Just a hen house and a giant rooster. She shouldn't even be able to generate the energy to burn things. Especially not the explosions."

Sasha frown, scratched his chin. He hadn't shaved in a few days, seeing as he had been hiding out in his lab, so it was rough. "Interesting. Any vaults?"

Raz scowled. "I haven't been able to confirm that yet, because she keeps randomly setting things on fire. I haven't been kicked out of a mind this many times in ages."

This was true, and partly accounted for Razputin's current sour disposition. Not only was he feeling incompetent, but the little red hen kept setting things aflame in the real world too. Last week she had ruined his favorite jacket before he had realized what was going to happen, and he had been wearing it!

Sasha felt that he should try to boost morale. "Don't worry about it. It's an odd case, nothing to go by. I'm sure that—"

And that was when Milla's fern exploded into a tiny plant inferno. Raz and Sasha couldn't do anything but stare. The younger found his voice first. "Holy shit."

Sasha quickly crossed the lab to put the fern out, shaking his head. "Wasn't it wearing a helmet?" he asked.

Raz gestured to the little bits of plastic and charred psitanium scattered on the floor, "You mean that?"

Sasha shook his head again, annoyed. The helmet had been his design. Truman himself hadn't been able to break through it, but a chicken put it in shambles. He looked at the fern and grimaced. There was hardly anything left of the poor thing, and he had less than an hour before Milla came down for lunch. "Raz, he began, "Do you think you can run to the plant shop for me?"

Raz shook his head. "Why? I thought you hated the fern."

"Milla liked it a great deal, and I really don't want to upset her."

He didn't want to upset her because she was seven months pregnant and had made him sleep on the couch the last three nights. His back was killing him, so he didn't fancy the idea of making it four. Raz grinned in a knowing sort of way, and Sasha, who was tired and grumpy and not feeling all that stoic, threw an eraser at him.

"Now Sasha," he chided, "That's hardly controlling your emotions, now is it?"

Sasha walked over to him and handed him a twenty. "Just go buy the plant."

Raz smiled all the way out the door. Maybe if he knew what was coming, he wouldn't have been.


End file.
